Share on bsky
View this post on Instagram
When she first came across my social media feed, I thought she was just another influencer.
She was shiny, blonde, and youthful, and I’m pretty sure I scrolled right past her. I quickly discarded her as someone in a different chapter, a different generation who I had no connection with.
As these things do, she returned to my feed. This time, I noticed something. She was in a hospital room. Still shiny and bright, but in a hospital gown instead of the previous breezy outfit. People share their medical experiences online all the time, yet I paused as I heard a familiar word. Cancer. I felt a little pull inside me.
I am a breast cancer survivor of four years, still grappling to make sense of my experience and what it means to me. But cancer connected us.
What kind, I wondered. What stage? I started watching for her as I scrolled, hoping she’d appear. I learned she had metastatic cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile duct cancer. This was not the same cancer I personally fought to survive, but it was cancer, just the same.
No longer just a word or a thought, cancer lives and breathes.
Once you’ve carried it with you, you can’t help but feel it in your body when someone says the word.
Instant recognition.
You move through your days, between scans and waiting and treatment and more waiting. You anticipate the day cancer is not your everyday existence, but a whisper of the past. The truth no one tells you is that it’s never really in the past.
My doctor never uses words like “remission” or “cancer-free,” even today.
In the beginning, the information came quickly with words I didn’t always understand. I heard the diagnosis, the treatment plan, the possible side effects. Amid all those words, I listened for someone to tell me when I could expect this to be over, when I could expect to return to my life. I recall the day I gathered up my courage to ask—would I get better?
Nobody had yet said what I was waiting to hear: you will survive this. But I did.
I still see the oncologist every six months. I take a post-cancer medication nightly to prevent recurrence. I live without my breasts and my ovaries and the lymph nodes under my right arm. My body shows the scars and the score. But does my life truly honour that survival?
I remember my days of treatment as though they happened through a heavy fog. The chemo, the surgeries, the medication, and the appointments all blur together in shades of grey. Yet when I watched Sydney’s videos, those IV poles and hospital rooms were vivid and in colour.
I began looking forward to her updates, wondering how she was doing, and what would come next for her.
It was cancer that made me stop and look, but what I saw was much more than that. I saw travel, friendships, and ordinary joys alongside her treatment. I saw her reach her goal of walking in Miami Swim Week. I shared her name and story with friends, but no one seemed as drawn to it as I was. I couldn’t explain my connection to this young woman I had never met or why I was checking for updates. Why did I care?
Gradually, things began to shift.
Sometimes she was back in the hospital for treatments or surgeries or unexpected crises.
Sometimes she cried as she shared news about growing tumors or uncontrolled pain.
Sometimes we would see her brother Austin, or her mother,or her friends who had travelled to visit.
I began to see more videos with tears than travel. Then there was a long gap with no update, and I saw other creators posting about her. They too had noticed her absence. I started typing her name into the search bar during my daily scroll.
One day her brother popped up in my feed:
“Sydney has been moved to hospice and is surrounded by her friends and family.”
I cried.
I thought, not for the first time, about what hospice might have looked like if my story had a different ending.
I thought about my family, my life, and the time I’ve had so far.
I cried, and I wondered what Sydney thought about before entering hospice. I wondered why I was so affected by her story and what exactly it meant to me.
In considering that question, I wondered what I owe to a life I was granted when others were cut short. Sydney died the day after Austin’s post at the age of 26.
It’s easy to see Sydney and I are different. When I watched her traveling and walking a runway, I was tempted to compare that freedom with the complicated middle-aged life I had returned to—children, divorce, a career.
I have pangs of guilt over the privilege of ordinary problems.
I was 42 at diagnosis, and she was just 23. In October I will be 46, approaching another birthday that she never reached.
So what about me?
Sometimes I still feel like I’m waiting for real life to begin. I look normal. My hair has grown back; I’ve had reconstructive surgery, and I’m dealing with my early surgical menopause as best I can. I still struggle to work full-time, and I get tired. I have a lot of ideas about my life in my head, but building that life is still a work-in-progress.
However, I am determined.
Sydney has given me a gift that comes from her TikToks and short, bright life. She shared her light with an audience of over a million people, saying simply, “I’m just happy to be here.”
I don’t owe anyone a life that is extraordinary to the outside eye. But I owe myself one that fills me with light and love. I long for freedom from anxiety, ordinary days with family and friends, and authenticity.
I owe it to myself to live.
~
Read 0 comments and reply